Thursday, July 20, 2017

Male dominion, magical women

I saw this on Twitter and had mixed feelings about it:

There is a sense in which women can claim to be a crowning achievement of divine creation. There is an aspect of womanhood which men perceive to be beautiful, pure, lovely and innocent and which inspires men to a higher form of love and protectiveness. This is women as they exist, potentially at least, on a spiritual level.

There are some alt-right women who are steering the ideal of womanhood back to this higher concept. Below, for instance, is a list of feminine virtues which fits in well with "spiritual womanhood":

The list is good, but a society has to be wise to other less elevated aspects of womanhood. Women can, in their emotions, be petty, unstable and destructive. You could think of a woman's emotions as sliding along a number of horizontal axes. For instance, one axis would have love at one end and hate at the other. Another would have fun at one end and "bored" at the other.

And, combined with this, women tend to externalise. In their experience, they are acted upon by external forces, so that they don't "own" their personal emotional states. These states happen to them, in ways difficult to understand, perhaps brought about by cosmic forces they cannot control.

This spells trouble for women's commitments, particularly their relationship commitments. Easily bored, easily feeling shifts from positive to negative emotion, sometimes prone to seek drama and excitement, sometimes unable to identify their own contribution to their emotional condition, and sometimes expecting an undefined "rescue" by or from some external agent.

It can lead to dissolved families or unhappy marriages. And it can be the most attractively feminine, emotionally vivacious and "nice" women who are most prone to these qualities.

The axis for men is different, as it does not involve as much sliding back and forth. Men seek to travel along a horizontal axis, the end point of which is a certain kind of mastery and control, e.g. to grasp the nature of reality, to penetrate to truth or knowledge, to exercise mastery of one's own will, to gain dominion in some sphere of life. The nature of this ambition means that men will try not to slide backward but to hold onto gains they have made, and it also means that men are pushed toward an "internal locus of control" - that the task is to use one's own concentrated powers to either succeed or fail in achieving mastery.

To illustrate the point further, think of the divergence that has opened up between men and women in the modern era when it comes to such things as auguries, divination and witchcraft. In pre-modern times, men used to seek control over events, in part, by such practices as reading the entrails of sacrificed animals. The scientific era pulled nearly all men away from all this (as being ineffective).

But most modern women still give some credence to various forms of fortune telling such as tarot cards. Even highly educated, professional women will use spells or magic to try to ward off "negative energies" that exert a baleful influence over them. Some women still go to fortune tellers to help them make major life decisions, such are those relating to marriage or divorce. Why? Presumably because they don't have the same mental focus as men on mastery or dominion but instead feel themselves, like the ancients, blindly and randomly subject to the Fates, or to Fortuna, or to cosmic energies that aren't rationally to be grasped but that can only be divined.

Most women, in their heart of hearts, are still ancients. Most men have moved on.

Which is not to say that the male axis is beyond criticism. At its best it is an attempt to grasp an order of existence that harmonises the spiritual, the social and the natural aspects of reality. But it often falls far below this. Some male moderns have tried to reproduce the success of the natural sciences in finding a single "law" by which society and/or self might be ordered. Some seem content to narrow life down to a sphere within which the individual might compete for dominion (e.g. man in the market). Some think only in terms of their own personal mastery within this sphere, the exercise of their own individual will, and so have little regard for the larger tradition they belong to, their communal identity, or for past and future generations. Those who do consider the larger society sometimes seek to achieve rational control via a soulless technocracy. And some have been reduced to a focus merely on the exercise of will itself, having lost faith in the possibility of a rational ordering of self or society.

11 comments:

"...women tend to externalise. In their experience, they are acted upon by external forces, so that they don't "own" their personal emotional states. These states happen to them, in ways difficult to understand, perhaps brought about by cosmic forces they cannot control....The axis for men is different, as it does not involve as much sliding back and forth. Men seek to travel along a horizontal axis, the end point of which is a certain kind of mastery and control, e.g. to grasp the nature of reality, to penetrate to truth or knowledge, to exercise mastery of one's own will, to gain dominion in some sphere of life....Which is not to say that the male axis is beyond criticism. At its best it is an attempt to grasp an order of existence that harmonises the spiritual, the social and the natural aspects of reality. But it often falls far below this."

As usual you've managed to be remarkably fair and balanced. The point about women feeling controlled by external forces is a good one. It explains a great deal of female anger, and possibly it also explains why otherwise intelligent women believe in nonsense like the patriarchy.

And I've known an extraordinary number of intelligent women who believed in astrology. In fact one of the reasons for the decline of Christianity may be that so many women have abandoned Christianity in favour of astrology, psychic readings, etc.

The point about women feeling controlled by external forces is a good one. It explains a great deal of female anger, and possibly it also explains why otherwise intelligent women believe in nonsense like the patriarchy.

Yes, if the mindset is that your life is being controlled by higher level powers, then you could easily be drawn into a rage against the patriarchy. It would represent a more modern (sociological/materialist) interpretation of something more ancient.

The other explanation that occurred to me is that if it was men who broke with the ancient view, and created modernity (both for better and worse) according to their own mindset, that some women might not feel that their own reality was being represented within a "patriarchal" society. In other words, these women might have felt more comfortable within, say, an ancient Roman patriarchy, than within a more modern and egalitarian one. This would explain the wing of feminism which sees science itself as being a patriarchal construct imposed upon women.

The other explanation that occurred to me is that if it was men who broke with the ancient view, and created modernity (both for better and worse) according to their own mindset, that some women might not feel that their own reality was being represented within a "patriarchal" society.

That's an interesting point as well. And if you look at the way modernity has dehumanised and atomised us, and reduced us to cogs in an economic machine, then women do have a perfectly valid reason for disliking such a system.

I believe that women don't perceive reality in the same way that men do, but that certainly doesn't mean men are always right and women are always wrong. We need male rationality but we need the female emotional perspective as well.

You can judge an economic system on purely rational grounds and come to the conclusion that it's wonderfully efficient. But if the system makes people miserable and lonely and alienated and unfulfilled then no matter how efficient it might be it's still a failure. It's a case where emotional truth is more valid than objective truth.

I can understand why the modern world makes women angry. I just think they're misdirecting their anger.

Don't know if this is related, but Christian women, at least the ones I know, are far more likely to claim that their decisions are based on direct conversations they have with God. They tell me that they literally speak to God and he speaks back - either in the form of "whispers" or direct conversation that they literally hear. I almost never hear Christian men claim this sort of thing.

It is quite possible that the female experience of religion is entirely and radically different from the male experience. For women religion may well be purely an emotional thing. That could be why women seem to be unworried by the widespread acceptance of heresy by Christian churches - women simply don't care about theology or doctrine at all. As long as they get the emotional buzz they'll accept any heresy. It's certainly a very good reason to oppose the ordination of women and to oppose vigorously the appointment of women to any position of authority within the Church.